The World in Emerald Blood
by Phoenix18
Summary: Shinra soldiers Tom and Ridley are sent to the ruins Midgar to retrieve fragments of Meteor. What they uncover is something best left undiscovered... and what occurs will change the face of the planet forever.


Midgar was a wreck.

Thomas Jefferys shook his head sadly as he picked his way over yet another twisted pile of smashed concrete and mangled girders, sharp edges and pieces of wire shoving up from every angle like the spines of a malevolent metal porcupine. Probably once it had been someone's house, where a family had slept, dined, and laughed together. Now it was just one more heap of rubble in his path. At least it seemed that whoever had occupied this once-structure had managed to evacuate before it collapsed - the wreckage was mercifully free from bloodstains or crushed skeletal limbs, for which he was eternally thankful. A Shinra soldier he had been, yes, and he'd done his fair share of fighting, seen his fair share of... disgusting sights. But that didn't mean he had to get used to it. Besides, there was something... grimly disturbing for him about the sight of a bony bleached arm thrust skywards from beneath the crushing weight of several tonnes of concrete and steel. As if not even death itself had provided a release from beneath the wreckage, and even now the corpses were reaching out, sobbing, pleading for someone, anyone, to pull them up from this hell-hole.

Just as the living had done...

He shuddered. The days following the ravaging of the once prosperous city by Meteor were a chapter of his life he would never forget, although there would probably never be a day when he didn't try. Most of Midgar's population had evacuated to the slums, placing a last desperate hope in the protection of the upper plates; only 'most' because, even in a crisis as immense as Meteor had been, there had still been people so damn _stupid_ that they placed the safety of their million-gil estates and art collections above their own. Money had provided them everything in their lives, but they couldn't seem to see that the one thing it couldn't give was a shield. Although on the other hand, Tom thought bitterly, they might have been the smart ones; intelligent enough to realize that there was no hope no matter where they sheltered, and that dying in the familiar comforts of their own homes was the only small salvation afforded to them. Even if the damn mountain-sized red rock itself hadn't impacted, the colossal hurricanes it spawned had torn the city apart as if it were made of Lego bricks. Four upper plates had collapsed; each one a town unto itself, thousands, perhaps millions of tons of buildings and steel sent thundering down into the slums below. Those people who'd counted on it to protect them hadn't had a prayer. He wondered what it must have been like, just to stand there and look up as the plate dropped towards you and to know that there was nothing, simply _nothing_, that could be done any more to escape -

Tom growled and shook his head, trying to dislodge the image.

The rescue operation had... in fact, there hadn't really been any official 'rescue operation'; how could there be, when the only company with the resources to implement such a task, Shinra, had been wiped out virtually overnight? All there had been were desperate people with shovels and a purpose. Tom among them. For days the tools had torn at the rubble as Meteor had at Midgar, upturning stone and steel in an almost frenzied search for survivors, guided by muffled sobs, cries for help, wails of pain beneath the concrete slabs; the slabs which seemed to laugh in his face as he struck again and again with a pickaxe at their stony hearts, refusing to budge even an inch as they slowly, sadistically crushed those underneath them. Occasionally, he found a survivor. All too often, there was only a body. Sometimes, there wasn't even that. Just...

Blood.

Slime.

... piec-

"Oi, Tom!"

Tom started in surprise as the voice snapped him from his daydreams, which was a bad move on such unstable ground. He staggered as the slab on which one foot had rested slipped and crashed away down the rubble heap, and his arms windmilled as he fought a brief battle for balance. A dry chuckle at the spectacle sounded from below as he righted himself. Brushing himself off, he scowled down indignantly at the grinning upturned face at the bottom of the pile. "It's a court-marshable offence to mock an officer, Ridley," he growled in mock anger.

The figure below chuckled again. "Actually, I never did tell you, did I? We're equal rank."

Tom raised a surprised eyebrow. "Since when?"

"Since all the trouble with _that_ thing." Ridley nodded in the direction of the Sister Ray, the huge artillery piece still dominating the Midgar skyline, casting a sharp-edged silhouette across the soft golden nimbus of the morning sun. The damn thing had taken not a scratch throughout Meteor's attack, which seemed to Tom nothing short of divine intervention (Which, seeing how it was true, wasn't really saying much, when he came to think about it), and even now, a full year after Midgar's decimation, it still stood firm. One of the few things in the once-city that did.

"Our CO got shot by that bastard in AVALANCHE - the one with the gun for an arm," continued Ripley nonchalantly as he began to climb towards Tom, negotiating his way around a cluster of steel cables, "And I was invited to take over. I didn't bother mentioning it though, seeing as Shinra's been bloody well completely squashed flat - making the seniority in their armed forces something of a moot point, wouldn't you agree?"

Tom chuckled dryly. He and Ripley were old-time protégés, friends since they first met at the Shinra boot camp, almost - was it really ten years ago now? Both were adept soldiers - Shinra didn't keep the feeble in it's ranks any longer than it had to, which was about as long as it took for the torturous rigors of training to break them - but Tom had always had just a hair more knack for impressing his superiors than Ridley, which usually meant he stayed one step up on the promotion ladder. The sudden revelation that Ridley had caught up at the very last hurdle left him feeling oddly punctured. Oh well, he thought with a wry smile. Not that it mattered now. "I don't suppose you've found anything, by any chance?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Ripley replied as he clambered over a mangled pile of girders glinting greasily in the sunlight and pulled himself up the last few feet to where Tom was waiting. He unclipped a small device from his belt with a gloved hand and flipped it open. "The scanner's showing... well, look for yourself."

Tom glanced down at the palm-screen. His jaw dropped. "A _thirty thousand_ degree magnitude? That's impossible!"

"Well, not according to this readout," Ridley replied. "I've checked and rechecked, and that reading came up every time. No amount of swearing at the damn thing could change it."

Tom looked up from the screen. "No way," he stated flatly, his voice thick with incredulity, "Can this be right. I _told_ you this damn thing was on the blink, Ridley. You should've picked up another one."

Ridley sighed. "You think I didn't think the same thing when I saw that number? But I radioed Mike and Mark; they're over in sector eight. Their readout shows the same. They can't both be broken, Tom."

"But..." Tom glanced down at the screen again, bewilderment etched into every line of his face; the magnitude reading stared resolutely back, the five figures sitting smugly in the centre. "... the highest reading we've ever had was only two hundred, and that was a chunk as big as a _room_, for chrissakes! There's no _way_ this can be possible. It'd have to be the size of a mountain..." He glanced around foolishly for a second, just against the possibility that, in his surprise, he had somehow missed noticing a second mountain range on the horizon. He hadn't.

"Well, evidently, it isn't," Ridley pointed out, just in case Tom was incapable of working that out for himself. "But _something's_ giving that reading. So I'd say it's worth checking out. It's what we're being paid for, remember? There might even be a bonus in it."

Tom sighed and rubbed at his eyes wearily. He didn't need this. He really didn't need this. What he needed was a long, long hot bath, a feather mattress, and then some time with his wife and daughter. Whatever the bonus was - and that was assuming they actually _got_ one - it was going to have to be something bloody good to make up for the last two weeks, and, to be honest, he couldn't think of anything that would cut the mustard. Just over a year ago, he might have asked for a fatter paycheck, an extra few thousand gil in his bank account, and that would have done fine. But that was back in the days of Shinra's economy; back when Shinra had owned _everything_, every factory, every hospital, every major shopping complex this side of the Western Sea. TVs, cars, kids' toys, computers, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, food, electricity (Oh yes, electricity) - there wasn't anything they didn't have a hand in producing. Midgar had accounted for over 90 of the world's gross economy. And they controlled banks. Interest rates, inflation, and a ton of other complex stuff that Tom had never understood. Shinra _was_ the economy, and gil was Shinra money.

And then, overnight, Shinra had been wiped out, torn asunder, and the system had gone with it. Nowadays, possibly the only use gil coins had was for filling holes in footpaths. The notes, as Tom had discovered, made good firelighters and were ideal for roll-up cigarettes, and that was about it. You'd a better chance of taking off by flapping your arms than you did finding someone who'd sell anything for money now, which was causing no small amount of horror among the corporate fatcats who'd survived Meteor and tried to buy their way back to luxury.

Tom grinned to himself. The fat bastards'd spent their entire lives slobbing around, making their fortunes by pressing their mouths to Shinra's backside, and only now did they realize that all they'd earned was a mouthful of shit. Served 'em all right.

He sighed and fumbled around in one pocket, his hand emerging a moment later with a said fifty-gil cigarette. Doubtless the system would sort itself out eventually, he thought as he set alight the old president of Shinra's face with a silver lighter and a practiced economy of motion (absently wondering as he did so if the real president's excessive handlebar moustache would have burned as easily as its printed counterpart). Until then...

"Speaking of bonus payments," he said as he exhaled a cloud of bitter smoke, "What did you ask to get paid with?"

"Me?" Ridley replied. "Oh, I'm wanting building tools and materials. First I'm gonna build myself a house down on the southern plains, then I'm going to do the same for other people. Still a big shortage of housing around, you know."

"I do know," Tom sighed. While he was lucky enough to have got his family a place of their own - albeit after six months of waiting and camping out in tents with nothing but a plastic bucket to piss in - there were hundreds, thousands more still living in tents, or in nothing except cardboard boxes, even now. It wasn't that they were being ignored; housing was being thrown up like mad as anyone with a knack for brick-laying, shoring or just pushing a wheelbarrow rallied round to help. The village of Kalm had increased almost tenfold in size over the past nine months, and hundreds more separate homes had sprouted like weeds all over the continent. But even so, you couldn't rehouse the better part of a third of Midgar's population just at the snap of a finger. The megapolis had had a population of over 3 million, for crying out loud; even 'just' a third meant around a million people to rehome, or something to the magnitude of two hundred and fifty thousand houses. They could build a hundred homes a day and it'd still take over six years to sort the whole damn mess out.

In short; business was going to be very good for builders for a fair while to come.

"What about you?" Ridley returned the question. "What'd you ask for? It can't be building materials as well; you couldn't even put a tent up, as far as I can remember."

Tom grinned. "True. Always did cause a fuss in field training. No, I asked for seed."

Ripley's eyebrow made a leap for his fringe. "Seed?"

"Yep," Tom nodded. "One hundred sacks, in fact. Maize, wheat, barley, oilseed rape, apple seeds; just about every crop you can think of."

Ridley's eyebrow hiked up further. "What the heck are you going to do with it all?"

Tom subjected his friend to a withering stare. "I'm going to plant it, you silly sod," he replied. "I'm going to lay claim to some land and start up a farm. You must have noticed how fertile the land's getting, now the damn reactors have all been shut down." He made a sweeping gesture towards the city limits, gazing out over the vast expanse in the clear morning air. "I mean, just look! A year ago this was a wasteland - dead ground for miles. Now..."

Ridley followed his gaze. "Most of it still is," he pointed out after a pause, puncturing the drama of the moment with an almost surgical precision. "All I can see is a few patches of greenery. I wouldn't call that fertile, not by a long shot."

Tom's withering glare grew to an intensity a mako reactor would have had trouble matching. "You've no sense of progress, have you? A year ago, there wasn't even that. And we're not that close to the city edge, you know. Those are some big patches. How much'll be back here by next year?"

Ridley returned his gaze to the bleak landscape. True enough, Mother Nature was flourishing in places – the cold morning sun sparkled lushly from the distant dew-beaded grasses, a carpet of subtle diamonds in emerald. From his vantage point they put him in mind of mould; but a sort of anti-mould, a growth that was restoring life to the barren swathe of death on which it grew. "I guess."

"Well, there you go."

"Even so," Ridley continued thoughtfully, "Seems like there's a _lot_ of farmers starting up recently. Most of 'em don't even know how to handle a shovel, let alone tend to entire crops, but they still want to make a go of it. There some sort of bug going round that makes everyone want to grow things?"

Tom turned away. "Yeah, well... something like that," he muttered, suddenly embarrassed. "Let's just say, you'd understand if you'd seen what happened to Meteor..."

Truth be told, he wasn't entirely sure _what_ he'd seen. Tom had been in Kalm at the time; he should have been on duty guarding the Sister Ray as it prepped to fire, but with the whole city under martial law and tensed to become a fully-fledged battleground he'd wanted to get his wife and daughter out as soon as possible. Besides, by that time he'd seen too much of Shinra's true face to care a fig for what happened to them or their plans. He'd spent almost ten years of service in the staunch belief that they were truly good and honest, dedicated to the welfare of the world, and looking back, he couldn't _believe_ how bloody naive he'd been. Still, everything that happened in those fateful few months had done more than enough to smash his rose-tinted spectacles. The collapsing of sector seven. The massacre of almost everyone in Shinra headquarters by the hideous bio-weapon creations they had stored there. The unleashing of Weapon, and then trying to pin the blame on AVALANCHE - Tom had been there, in the execution room, and heard that red-wreathed wraith Scarlet openly admitting they were only doing it to dupe the public.

That one had been the last straw for him - he'd stood there, ever the dutiful and obedient soldier, and watched Scarlet's hitherto attractive features creased with cruel mirth as she laughed into the cameras, bragging - bragging to the very public she was trying to deceive! - that people wouldn't care who was executed, as long as someone was punished, and Tom's blood had boiled. Not just at her, but at everyone, every stupid sheep that made up flock of the planet's population who so blindingly trusted their masters they would follow them even when Shinra put a gun to their heads and pulled the trigger -

All of which was another reason why he hadn't wanted to stay in Midgar any more than he had to. Because afterwards, he'd been sent to the docks to guard the submarines. He was pretty sure that handing over one of the Shinra Navy's best aquatic vessels as fast as it took to say "I surrender," ranked under treason, and he wasn't keen to find out the punishment.

Ridley, through either courage or just complete lack of foresight, hadn't taken the chance to slip away, and had remained on guard duty when AVALANCHE came storming through. Now a faded black eyepatch over his left eye stood testament to the encounter, and as far as Tom was concerned, he was bloody lucky to have got away so lightly. His injuries had resulted in him being evacuated to a temporary medical facility outside the city, and then onto a swift helicopter headed for Junon. He was in a mild coma in one of the fortress city's many hospitals when Meteor struck; even had he been conscious, he wouldn't have been able to see anything from there.

Tom had been able. He'd watched, numb with despair, as the colossal body, a billion tons of dirty red rock, red as blood, red as nightmares, had bore down on Midgar, so slowly it almost seemed to be _savouring_ the moment before it struck. Watched as the whirling hurricanes gleefully ripped through the city like a child dragging a stick through an ant's nest, obliterating houses, shattering the very plates in their utter fury. Watched, too far gone into terror to even scream any more; watched, though the dull mists of sanity's shadow, as the scythe swung on the planet -

And then -

And then, there had been light, light so... there were no words to describe it. The sheer magnificence. A light of such purity and brilliance that his eyes should have burned from their sockets in a moment, yet felt as soothing as a shadow's shelter in the blinding sunlight. And from all around, etching the horizon east to west, coiling across the ocean whose waves flashed like blood under Meteor's baleful glare and shimmering across the rooftops above, a surging tsunami of coiling green energy as if the great Northern aurora's rippling curtains of blood and emerald and sapphire had set the night sky aflame; like snakes made mist, like emotion made liquid, and no matter how he described it Tom knew he could never get into words even a fraction, a _billionth_, of what he had felt as that light engulfed the world and struck against the evil red rock like a hammer blow. All he could do was to stand there, hope blossoming like a rose inside him as he witnessed the titanic battle taking place, and there had been an aura of such... _desperation_, such agonizing determination, the simple knowledge that there was _no_ other choice but that this succeeded, and suddenly it struck him how...

...how completely bloody _stupid_ everything was. How everyone, without truly understanding what they were seeing, were rallying round in support of the great white light, millions of minds shouting, screaming, whispering in silent encouragement as the violation that was Meteor was forced back; how the entire village and probably the entire world had erupted into cheers as Meteor cracked, ruptured and finally exploded in a blazing corona of eyeball-searing black flame that etched the universe in blinding white and blackness as harsh as a photo negative; how the sparkling green river of light, that emotion made liquid, had silently withdrawn, looping sonorously over the distant horizon or sinking quietly into the ground, leaving a velvet star-spangled sky and a new flood, a bursting fountain of emotion made sound as the cheering spiraled into the heavens. Tom had joined the ecstatic chorus, punching the air and screaming in the wild throes of such maddened joy as he'd never felt before, not even when surviving combat, but even as he'd shouted and laughed and leapt and hugged his wife and daughter and anyone else who'd happened to be around, as others collapsed to the ground, sobbing in relief, or just sprawled mute, white-eyed and trembling from the adrenaline overdose, and others had took to the streets cheering and running and dancing... as people dissolved in disbelieving relief, a small note had written itself in the back pages of his mind.

A little note scrawled in black, bitter ink. A note which said... the world hadn't been saved. Hadn't been saved at all.

All these people... all these people were cheering because the sudden threat of Meteor had been wiped out just as abruptly as it appeared, because _destruction had been averted_... yet those very same people, himself included, had been destroying the planet for years; reaping it's forests, tearing up it's resources, poisoning it's rivers and seas, and - worst of all, infinitely worst of all - planting those huge, mechanical leeches that sucked the life blood, the very sodding _life force_, from the earth, to be converted into electricity to power their pollution-spewing factories. Here they were, so _happy_ that the planet had been saved, the sweeping scythe stopped short, and there was going to be a few days of celebration and then everyone would go back to their lives and their machines and lifestyles that killed the planet one little piece at a time -

But not him, he'd resolved, there and then. Not him. After everything that had happened he was not, he _was not_ going turn around and start pissing on the planet again! They had been granted another chance by the deflection of the killing stroke, a chance to live; and he was damned if he was going to use it to start cutting his wrists all over again.

He voiced as much to Ridley - albeit less poetically, because guys weren't supposed to think like that, to his soldier's mind at least, and Ridley nodded. "Ah," he said, "so everyone who's farming is wanting to do their bit to regrow the land?"

"Pretty much. I wasn't the only one thinking along those lines, it seems."

"'It seems'." Ridley echoed, chuckling. "Yeah, you could say that. Everyone's in a damn fever. I wondered what the hell had happened - I get knocked unconscious in a world where everyone licks Shinra's boots, and when I wake up everyone's jumping for joy because Rufus and the rest of his cronies are pushing up the daisies and the hospital's got no power because some bugger's gone and blown up the underwater reactor."

And how everyone had cheered, Tom thought. He'd been wrong: the world hadn't started cutting it's wrists again. What people _had_ done was something far less metaphorical involving mako reactors and several hundred kilos of semtex. Shinra's last remaining _Vampire ex Machinas_ were little more than junk now, and the world was slowly but surely recovering; the Condor plains were in full bloom with grass and flowers, the fish were returning to the waters around Junon, and the Nibel mountain range, always famed for it's lurid green caves from the rich mako deposits, practically glowed in the dark from the accumulating energy. Even the Corel mountains, about as infertile a piece of land as could be, was starting to show signs of returning life in sparse grasses and nesting birds. And people were planting, sowing, reaping, tilling, ploughing, working the land every day to encourage yet more growth to the once-dead soil. Ridley was right; it was as if a fever had been set loose, a fever of caring and determination. He'd wondered more than once if that great light in the sky hadn't _done_ something that night. Sowed thoughts, perhaps, as people were now sowing seeds.

Ridley sighed and continued. "Seems a damn shame we're without power though. I miss my air conditioning."

Tom snorted. "You're a sodding solider, Ridley. You're supposed to be able to survive by eating soil, if it comes to it."

"And so I can," he replied with a grin that bordered on pious. "Doesn't mean I have to enjoy it, though, does it? Anyway, if we want that bonus we're gonna have to find the source of that reading, you know. We're not getting paid to jaw all day."

Tom sighed and took another drag on his cigarette. "Fine. Which way?"

"Towards the inner city. We can get a more accurate reading when we're closer. Shouldn't be long, though, with a signal of this strength. Come on." Ridley turned and climbed-skidded his way down the loose concrete. After a long moment, Tom blew out a cloud of smoke in another weary sigh and began to clamber laboriously after his friend.

He didn't want this. Given the choice, he'd have turned round right now and gone home. He needed that seed, though, to get his farm going... but he didn't like this job. He didn't like it one bit...

They reached the bottom and began to scale the next heap of rubble, pulling themselves up along a section of long-dead power cable snaking from the summit. After a couple of minutes of silence bar grunts and pants of exertion, Ridley looked round. "One hundred sacks?" he asked idly. "Isn't that a bit steep?"

Tom grinned mirthlessly as he pulled himself up further. "I thought so too," he grunted, shifting his grip. "That's why I only asked for twenty. But they said they could get me five times that amount. God knows where from."

Ridley's eyebrow rose, revealing the forked of a scar from beneath his eyepatch. "They upped your asking price that much? They offered me twice the amount of materials I asked for; I thought _that_ was erring on the generous side. They sure can get their hands on some stuff, can't they?"

"I know," Tom growled as he hoisted himself up further. He shouldn't have had the cigarette; it'd taken the wind out of him, which wasn't good when you had to exert yourself for any length of time. He adjusted his grip again. "Don't you think that's a bit strange?" he continued, straining. "That this research group can be so generous? I mean, where exactly _are_ they getting all this stuff from?"

"Perhaps they're not going to pay us," Ridley mused as he pulled himself up to the top of the pile.

Tom barked laughter. "They've hired fifty of the best Shinra troops for this job," he replied. "And fifty troops is not the sort of crowd you try to rip off, Ridley. I think they're smart enough to realize that." He pulled himself up beside Ridley. "No, I think they're going to pay. But we can't be the only ones they've raised the asking price for, right?"

"You think they've upped everyone's salaries on this job?" He glanced down the next rubble slope. "We'll never make it down there on foot. Give me a hand here." He picked up the cable with which they'd ascended and began pulling it up; Tom stepped over to help.

"They really want these samples bad, don't they, if they've done that?" He shook his head. "I don't like this, Ridley, you know? There's something not right with those rocks. There's something not right with this whole damn business."

"Oh, come off it," Ridley scoffed as he pulled up the last of the cable and, turning, flung it down the other side. "They're just bits of space rock, is all."

"Hah," Tom snorted. "You mean pieces of Meteor. Not just any old space rock, here. Pieces of Meteor itself."

Ridley shrugged. "And? Meteor's space rock too, you know. Space rock that almost killed us, yes, but that's not it's fault. Come on." He grabbed the cable, making sure the other end was firmly anchored in the rubble, and began to shimmy down.

"Yes," Tom continued as he followed, "But don't these guys strike you as a little _too _eager? These pieces are scattered from here all the way to the Mythril Mountains, but they've got teams out searching _everywhere_. I even heard they've sent submarines out to scout the oceans. And they ask for every piece to be brought in, no matter how small. Pebbles, dust even. How much do they need? That room-sized piece we found, even _that's_ not enough for any experiments they want to try?"

"Yes, but Meteor's the first space object to reach the planet since the Northern impact two thousand years ago," Ridley sighed, as if lecturing a child. "Of course they're going to want as much of it as they can. They're probably a bunch of geologists and astronomers. Those guys make a hobby out of finding out what makes stone stone, and what colour the stars are. The prospect of studying Meteor's probably giving them wet dreams right now. It's probably the most excitement they'll ever get in bed, at any rate."

Tom snorted. "True. But 'probably' a bunch of geologists, you said. Interesting how we don't know who the hell they are, isn't it? And what about all this technology they've got? The scanners, for one..."

Ridley reached the bottom of the pile and brushed himself off before unclipping the scanner and flipping it open "It's this way," he replied, pointing towards a mangled tangle of girders and cables. 'Tangle', in fact, was almost too soft a word - it looked as if some giant metal spider had got into a web-flinging fight with it's own legs. It looked to be at least twenty metres high, and completely sheer.

Tom groaned. "We're never gonna get over that." He glanced around. "Or anywhere else, for that matter. This is a dead end, Ridley. We're gonna have to climb back up."

"We may not have to." Ridley pointed towards the base of the pile, where the front end of a train carriage jutted out like a worm extricating itself from an apple. "That looks pretty intact. It might go all the way through."

"You're taking the piss, Ridley," Tom exclaimed as Ridley picked his way across to the doors; he heaved them open with an ominous howl of tortured metal and stepped inside. "There's no way I'm setting foot in there. I know you're always one for unusual solutions to problems, but this one's taking the whole sodding biscuit factory."

"I was right," Ridley's voice echoed from the dark interior of the train. "I can see daylight in the back carriage. We can get through here, I think." His head popped back out of the door. "The train's undamaged, though; looks like it's in a tunnel, and these tunnels were designed to take the weight of buildings anyway, so it's not going to collapse. You coming?"

Tom growled something sulphorous and stepped inside. "God," he muttered, "I hope there's no bodies in here. Crawling through a dark train of dead people is _not_ my idea of fun, Ridley. Can't we find another way?"

"It'll take too long. I don't like it much either, but it's the quickest way. Come on." They stepped forwards cautiously, their boots raising small clouds of dust in the reflected semi-light streaming through the doorway behind. Rows of worn, moth-eaten chairs stretched away in the gloom - all mercifully empty. No-one had thought of sheltering in the train tunnels, it seemed - either that, or everyone who had had survived and made it out alive.

Or perhaps the bodies were just further down...

"So, what were you saying about the scanners?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah..." Tom replied, blinking - he tried to push away the sudden oppressive feeling of being very alone in this dark place, even with his friend right in front. "Don't they seem odd, either? They're damned advanced technology for a research group."

"Not really," Ripley replied, pushing open the next carriage door and stepping through; the carriage was dark, dark as a pit, and the blackness engulfed him like water as he stepped through. A moment later a spear of light cut across Tom's vision as Ridley flicked on his flashlight. "Shinra had loads of technology like that."

"That's just it," Tom replied, sweeping his own flashlight through the darkness as if he were trying to cut it away with a blade; he'd never been afraid of the dark, but his nervousness was increasing, swelling like a carbuncle with every step. He glanced back at the thin stream of light behind them that marked the door they came in by - only two carriages away, but suddenly it seemed like a mile.

This wasn't right. He wasn't afraid of the dark. But this dread... it was...

... familiar...

His eyes widened as he realized. It almost felt like... the magnitude was so huge...

... but it couldn't be that. Ridley seemed fine. Couldn't be. Probably just this damn tunnel...

He fixed his eyes on the distant point of daylight and fixed his mind on stepping back out into the sun. "Shinra had that kind of technology," he continued, trying to get back on track, "But... well, I don't think Shinra was ever interested in rocks. So would they really go investing so much into a device to detect stones? And anyway, how do you detect a stone?"

"Some sort of rare mineral inside them? Could be that." Ridley heaved open another door. The groan of metal echoed in the close silence.

"Even so, there's no company that could have afforded it - all research groups with funding like that had to go through Shinra, and I can't see them approving a massive grant for rock detectors." Tom glanced around apprehensively; it was all too easy to imagine the tunnel groaning just like that door, groaning, grinding and buckling as it -

"Can we get the hell out of here?" he hissed. "This place is giving me the heebie-jeebies. And besides, how can you detect a mineral? You can't from a distance, I'm damn sure of that. There's gotta be some kind of radiation coming from those pieces, and damn if I don't think it's harmful somehow."

"Oh please," Ridley sighed, pulling open the next door. "You're worrying over nothing, I'm telling you. It's just rock."

"Really?" Tom growled, and suddenly stopped, glaring at his friend's back. "Well, I've seen you Ridley, when we've found those pieces. And I damn well _know_ they're freaking you out as much as me."

Ridley paused.

"You've noticed too, haven't you?" Tom continued, his voice low, and his eyes harrowed. "Those fragments... they're just red rock, but whenever I just look at one I feel physically ill. I saw you when we found that boulder fragment, Ridley. You were practically green in the face, and I know I was, because I felt like I was going to throw up at the sight of it. But it's just a damn _rock_, isn't it?"

Ridley still hadn't turned around. "Tom, don't be ridiculous..."

"Don't give me that!" Tom half-shouted, his voice slamming into the dark metal walls around them and rebounding away into the gloom; he took a breath, willing himself to calm down. "You _know_ that's not all. I've carried samples in my backpack before, so have you, and if you tell me you've not had to fight the urge to throw the damn thing as far away as you can then you're lying. The skin on my back feels like it's trying to crawl around to my front to get away from the stuff. And nothing grows around them, Ridley. Have you noticed that? The pieces we found in the fields... grass and crops for miles, yet these things sit dead centre in a circle of dead ground. As if they're poisoning the land or something."

"Tom... that can't be, I mean... they're just rocks... right?" Ridley turned suddenly to face him and Tom's eyes widened. The look on Ridley's face was one of taut, barely suppressed emotion, and his eye glittered with cold dread. And in his voice, a slight tremor, a hesitation that had been there throughout, beneath the surface, unnoticed: a tremor which said that his words were to convince himself as much as Tom.

"So you _do _know..."

Ridley nodded. "All right, yes... I thought I was just being stupid, though... the last time I picked one of those pieces up, I ended up washing my hands for a full half-hour. They make me feel sick, too..."

Tom gulped. "Ridley," he whispered, his voice hoarse - the darkness seemed to be closing in on him, wrapping itself around his eyes till he couldn't see a thing, and he blinked furiously. "Neither of us are afraid of the dark, Ridley. We've crawled through tunnels worse than this without a qualm. Why are we feeling like this?"

Ridley shook his head as if to dislodge something. "I... don't know. I feel as if..."

"As if you're carrying one of those pieces right now?" Tom whispered urgently. "Because I feel like I'm pulling a whole cartload, Ridley." He stepped forwards. "The magnitude, Ridley. Something that size... could it be _affecting_ us, even here?"

The two flashed their torches around nervously. Rows of empty seats stretched away into the darkness, but it suddenly seemed to Tom all too easy to imagine their occupants, waiting, in the shadows, pearly eyes staring through them, rattling breath edging closer, closer -

He jumped as Ridley snarled and shook himself. "Look," he growled, his voice low. "We're just a bit... nervy. Those rocks are probably... poisonous or something, but they don't seem to have harmed us yet. As for fearing the things... well, they're part of Meteor, and Meteor almost killed us all. It's only natural. Let's just... find out what this magnitude is. Call in the helicopter. After that, let's just call it a day, alright? Go and get some rest. We'll feel fine in the morning. Just nerves and fatigue."

Tom hesitated for a long moment, wishing that he hadn't noticed that Ridley didn't believe his own words. "I'd feel a hell of a lot happier just getting the hell out of here -"

"Well, it's quicker to get out by going on now anyway," Ridley interrupted, "And I'd prefer it if whatever's causing that magnitude was got the hell out of here as well. No matter that research team wants it for."

Tom sighed. "Alright, fine. Let's go..."

Ridley stepped forwards into the next carriage. He was right; the daylight was only a couple carriages away now. More than anything, Tom wanted out of this train, but...

... but he didn't want to go out that way. He wanted to turn, walk back they way they came. _Run_...

Ridley flipped open the scanner and stared at it's luminous readout. "We're pretty close," he murmured. Should be... somewhere close to the last carriage..."

They stepped forwards again. Their footsteps thudding hollowly in the dark air. The square of sunlight drew slowly closer, so tempting, so relieving, so...

... terrible...

Tom closed his eyes. _Just this,_ he repeated mentally, over and over,_ And we can go home. Just this last one._

_Just this. Keep walking. Just this... nothing to fear..._

And then they were there. Tom blinked in the sudden light streaming through the carriage windows, bathing his arms in suckling, honeyed warmth. He'd almost forgotten what sun felt like in that void, and he turned his face towards upwards as if to cleanse his skin in it's showering softness.

And yet, he couldn't, and his heart thudded against his chest as he realized. He... couldn't remember what the sun felt like, even here, awash in it. The dread, the wrongness, was filling him like an infection, like a swarm of bees come to take their honeyed light back from him.

He shouldn't be here...

Run...

_Run...! _

Ridley wrenched open the last door and a cool breeze washed over the two, carrying the mixed scents of

_Carrion, the foul scent of carrion in a cruel winter breeze_

metal, dust, old oil, and pollen, even this far from the fields of Kalm -

Tom shook his head, then squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled tentatively.

Oil.

Rust.

Metal.

Dust.

Pollen.

Where had -

A pair of clicks echoed in the silent air, _chick-chick_. Tom's eyes snapped open. Ridley had his pistol out, half-pointing towards the door. Sweat was beading on his forehead; his eye was wide, fearful, and even through his eye patch Tom could feel a palpable sense of dread emanating from his ruined socket. For a moment a sarcastic voice in his brain tried to make him say_ A gun? What do you plan to do, shoot the rock between the eyes?_ but all he could think about was a sudden fervent wish that he'd brought his own weapon as well.

"Now or never..." Ridley whispered. "Now... now or never, Tom... let's go." He stepped forwards, out into the light -

_screams_

Nothing happened.

Tom stepped out cautiously after him, eyes darting. Towering mounds of rubble stretched upwards either side of them, placing them at the base of a narrow ravine; the sort he and his platoon had been forced to advance through at least a dozen times in past missions, though usually they were natural. And in each one, each and every bloody one, there were snipers in the cliff tops, or occasionally even sappers with explosives waiting to bring the entire damn place down on their heads. Every time they made one of those advances he'd prayed that he'd never had to through another.

So it came as a doubly unpleasant shock as he realized that he was actually wishing to be back there rather than here.

What was wrong? He'd never been this afraid before, not even

_Shattering of bone, blood, endless gouts of blood, and the laughter, the shrieks of maddened glee -_

as a rookie on his first mission -

He shook his head. "Ridley," he whispered, mopping away the sweat threatening to pour into his eyes, "Did you just say somethi-"

"No," Ridley hissed. "You hear it too?"

"I... don't know." It's more like I... _feel_ it..."

Ridley unclipped the scanner from his belt. The screen resolved itself into a distance grid, and a moment later a flashing pulse appeared, flashing rapid as their heartbeats. "It's close," he whispered. "Fifteen metres forward, thirty to the left... that puts it just past this wreckage here..."

They started forwards, their boots crunching deafeningly in the silent air, skirting along the edge of the rubble beside them. Tom's breath came short and fast. It felt like the worst kind of

_Rape, invasion, desecration_

combat situation, the sort where you know you're surrounded by a hidden enemy and there's not a damn thing you can do about it before they blow your brains out... the moment where you _saw_ the soldier in the shadows in front of you, and the terrible moment when you realize their laser point is jittering between your eyes...

"Look," Ridley whispered, gesturing ahead. Tom looked. The pile they were skirting came to an end a dozen metres onwards, and past it, radiating from around the corner, a dark swathe of

_blood_

pulsing red light stretched across the shattered ground, twinkling sinisterly, hungrily, from the twisted metal and glass shards. "That's got to be it," Ridley hissed. "It's just around the corner, Tom..."

They pressed forwards. Ten metres.

_Hatred_

Eight metres.

_infection_

Five

_agony_

metres.

_carnage_

Two metres...

One...

The pulsing light was cutting across right in front of Tom's feet. Now or never...

... terror...

... shouldn't do this, I shouldn't do this...

He gritted his teeth. Just one look. One. Call the helicopters and go home.

One look - !

He stepped forwards, thrust his head around the corner, turned -

and saw -

_BLOODMURDERRAPEINFECTIONDEATH_

"My God - " He jerked his head back, quivering, his eyes wide with disgust and horror. A moment later he collapsed forwards and threw up, his hands raking across his eyes as if to try to physically wipe away the vision he had just beheld.

"What? Tom, what's wrong?" Ridley hissed in alarm. "What did you see?"

The only answer he received was a wracking retch. Ridley glanced nervously towards the edge of the wreckage, where the red light spilled like blood from a wound. He and Tom had seen things in war that no human was ever meant to see, but nothing in their entire time as soldiers had ever horrified Tom to the point where he threw up. What the hell was behind there...

He snapped his head out -

He whipped back not even half a second later, but the glistening mask of pure unutterable nausea that had replaced his face told Tom that that half-second had been more than enough. "God," Ridley gulped, fighting to retain his stomach contents. "That's... hideous..."

Tom nodded. "I know," he whispered hoarsely, struggling to his feet and wiping his mouth; his legs trembled. The thought of his farm, with it's fields of rippling wheat and maize, and it's orchards bursting with fruit, seemed suddenly a complete waste of effort; because no matter how succulent the fruit he grew he knew he would probably never have the appetite to eat again. What was around that corner was...

... he didn't know whether it was sheer disbelief that made him edge forwards again, an inability to comprehend that something so vile could possibly be real; or whether he _needed_ to look again, to scorch that... that _thing_ into his memory so he would know never to look as long as he lived; or whether his mind had been scrambled into insanity. Whatever the reason, edge forwards he did. Ridley glanced up at him. "Hey," he growled, still gulping with nausea, "Are you bloody mad?" You still want to look?"

Tom didn't reply. He edged forwards, heart pounding.

And then he was looking.

_MURDERDEATHKILL_ -

Tom had never paid attention to his English classes at school. Books weren't his thing; he preferred his action real, and there was something almost insulting about the fairy-tale constructs built within the paper; how the good guy always won because, well, they were the good guys, and the good guys always won. They lied to people. Life didn't work like that; it wasn't a story, all neatly planned and typed out by some author with too much time on his hands. The occasional book had been able to spark at least a meagre interest, however; one of the few he could recall, this one if for no other reason than it tried to break the mould, was a story about a professor Jekyll who created a bizarre potion from mako energy that could transform him into an evil alter ego, Mr. Hyde. Tom's recollection of the whole thing was sketchy at best - even if it was more interesting than the average story, he still hadn't much cared for it. But now, as he stared into the source of the red glow, a single aspect of that story leapt from his memory as clear as when he'd first read it; the details of Mr. Hyde's appearance. And the thing about Mr. Hyde's appearance, he recalled, was this: there was nothing remarkable about it whatsoever. Look at Mr. Hyde and all your eyes saw was an average man, albeit short in stature. But what _you_ saw, what the voices in the raw base depths of your soul shrieked at you to see, was a man hideously deformed, grotesquely twisted, a sneering slimy demon wrapped in the mocking parody of human flesh, a man the mere sight of whom would cause a boiling hatred to ignite in people's minds without their ever knowing why.

This was the same.

_SLAUGHTERHATEINFECTION - _

It was a crystal. A shining crystal as large as a man's torso, rough and irregular, hovering above the wreckage some thirty feet away like a tightly packed swarm of wasps guarding their nest, buzzing, crawling. Like Hyde, there was nothing about it physically that suggested it was anything other than a highly unusual stone. But Tom wasn't paying attention to what his eyes were telling him; the signals from his gut, his crawling skin, the extrasensory elements of his mind that could tell exactly when a gun was pointed his way even when he couldn't see a single soldier, all were screaming that what lay in front of him was something so hideous it was inconceivable, foulness itself made substance. The glow from it's core was the colour of blood, blood awash with disease and infection, and the pulsing light that splattered across Tom's face felt as if his skin were being rubbed with excrement, forcing it's way up his nose, down his throat -

_PAINCARNAGEBLOOD - _

He wrenched his head back around the corner and stood for a moment, quivering with disgust; his fingers twitched as he fought against the urge to claw at his skin, tear his face off, rip his eyes out. But something about that thing had been... familiar...

"Ridley," he choked, trying to hold in what little remained in his stomach, "I think... I think that's... materia."

Ridley's eye narrowed. "What?" he hissed. "That can't be. What the hell kind of materia would _that_ be? It's..." he paused, his fingers curling into claws, at a loss to find anything foul enough with which to describe it, "It's... gross..."

"I know what you mean," Tom whispered hoarsely in reply. "But I was there when they loaded that huge materia onto the submarine at Junon, and I'm telling you this looks just like that."

"Materia... from... inside Meteor..." Ridley breathed, shuddering. "Just what the hell was that damn rock..."

_rape torture_

"I don't know," Tom replied. "But I'm thinking we should call the choppers in _right now_. I want out of here."

Ridley nodded emphatically and fumbled inside his jacket, his hand emerging a moment later with a flare gun and a belt strip of seven flares. Each was marked with a band of colour; two red, two green, and two blue. Green flares, Tom and Ridley had been briefed, were to signal for pickups when they were loaded down with as many samples as they could carry. Blue flares indicated rock samples too large to be moved by strength alone. Red were used to call for emergency medical aid.

The last flare was marked violet, indicating urgent priority, and it was this which Ridley unclipped and slotted into the flare gun's barrel. He snapped the gun closed, aimed at the sky and pulled the trigger. With a dull thud so unlike the harsh statacoes of gunfire that Tom was used to a flaring point of violet light shot high into the clear morning sky, trailing smoke -

_Perception!_

- and a sudden wash of unutterable terror froze the blood in their veins.

The terror of rabbits and rodents as the blinding headlights catch them. The terror of the mouse as wings eclipse the sun.

The terror of the soldier as a laser flashes across his chest.

The terror, as a great evil eye opened up behind them and caught them in the full beam of it's insidious glare.

That thing... was...

.._Alive... _

_...and it knew they were there...!_

_Inspection_

He couldn't move. Couldn't even think. This was horror beyond horror, horror beyond madness, a silent scream of white fire consuming every inch of his mind; incinerating, shriveling all semblance of rational thought into ashes. He tried to breathe, couldn't; his breath was frozen in his throat, and only a strangled, desperate choke escaped him as he fought to gasp, to scream, to flee. The shattered stone and girders drifted slowly away down a tunnel in his vision, dwindling into an ocean of white mist; his hearing consumed by a dreadful whistling silence; the world was abandoning him, slowly, lazily leaving him behind to his fate like a ship vanishing into fog, heedless of the pleading screams of a survivor clinging to the driftwood; and leaving him shivering, alone in the void of the dark, silent waters, to a realm of nothing but the frantic thudding of his heart and the eye, the wet, salivating heat billowing across his back as it's quivering jaws inched towards him -

_Assessment_

_Help me oh god something anything help me help me - _

His heart punched against his chest, caged and maddened for escape, it's panicked hammering roaring in his ears until it deafened him, _thud thud thud thud_ _thudthudthudthudthud_ and now they were the crashing footfalls of some great slobbering animal lumbering from behind, shouldering aside rubble and rock, saliva pooling across the ground, it's eye, it's great evil eye wide with wicked glee as it speared through it's prey -

_Infection?_

_Thudthudthudthudthuthuthuthuthuthuthuthuthuthuthu - _

Then -

There was a new sound. A sound that had layered itself into the pounding blood in Tom's ears, drowned in his maddened heartbeat, split apart, became separate.

Some droplet of memory rippled inside Tom's terror-ravaged mind.

It was -

They were -

_Thudda thudda thudda thudda thudda thudda - _

Rotor blades. Helicopters.

And with a dread release like a knife being wrenched from his flesh he felt the great eye swing around, it's terrible focus sweeping away from him towards the skies.

_Interest_

Tom buckled, his muscles shuddering as the paralysis released it's hold, then slowly toppled forwards and crashed to the ground. Dimly, he was aware of a second crash as Ridley followed suit. An overwhelming sense of relief burst like a weeping storm in his mind, drenching him in it's sweet tears; he wanted to laugh and cry, he wanted to leap for joy, to drop down on his knees and thank whatever gods there were for distracting the attention of that_ thing_. But he couldn't. He could only lie, too weak to even twitch a finger, and listen to the ragged gulping of his own breathing.

"G... God..." Ridley's whisper floated across to his ears, "What... what the hell... was that..."

"I... don't know," Tom replied hoarsely; his arms trembled as he slowly pressed his hands against the ground to push himself up, marveling at the cool sense of the stone against his skin; marveling that he could still feel anything. "There's something... in that materia..."

Ridley groaned as he managed to get himself up on one knee; his body shook from the effort and he clutched at his chest, panting. He looked physically ill; sweat was pouring from his brow, his skin was pale, his eye half-closed and twitching. "Just... thank God..." he panted, "It's distracted... the helicopters - "

They realized at the same time, and a new dread seized at their hearts as they spun round, fatigue forgotten, to face the direction of the thuttering rotors.

The helicopters were mere specks on the horizon, barely visible to human eyes. But the other eye wasn't human, and they could almost see the beam of it's vision spearing across the sky to encompass the two approaching aircraft.

_Contemplation _

"Oh no..." Tom panted. "It's seen them... Ridley, what's it going to do...?"

"We've got to get the hell out of here, Tom!" Ridley hissed, his breath heaving with barely repressed panic. "Get out of here before it loses interest in them - "

"And what happens if they touch down?" Tom hissed in return. "That thing's going to get them - "

"Do you really think they're going to even _think_ of landing as long as it's got it's attention fixed on them? You just felt it! Now let's get the hell out of here before - "

_Conclusion_

The terror vanished.

" - before..." Ridley's voice faltered, then died.

The two men blinked in confusion.

A faint crystalline clatter tinkled in the quiet air.

"W-... what?" Ridley shook his head, bewilderment etching his features in vivid shadows. "What the smeg? We were... and then..." He paused, and stared at Tom. "What the hell just happened?"

Tom pressed his fingers to his temples. "I... don't know," he muttered as he squeezed his eyes shut. It was as if someone had flicked a switch. The sheer terror had buzzed like a live wire in his brain, and then... it was just gone. All that remained was a low-key wariness, as if spotting a sleeping tiger in the middle distance. "We didn't just... imagine all that, did we?" he murmured, half to himself, and began to pore through the catalogues of his memory against the possibility that somehow he had; that the whole thing had been just some bizarre hallucination, and the two were just out on yet another search for yet more damn rock.

"No, we can't have done," Ridley answered his question, "We can't both dream the same thing, right? That huge crystal? The bloo - the red light?" He paused for a moment, then added in a doubtful tone, "... can we?"

Tom wished his friend didn't sound so uncertain. He would've liked nothing more than to be told that the terror, the crystal with it's hideous light, the eye... that it was all just a dream , some mad vision dragged up from the dark well of his imagination - were it not for the fact that it left hanging the ominous question of okay, just what the heck was up with his brain that could cause such a vision in the first place?

He turned to look towards the other end of the rubble pile. He could remember the disgusting red light spilling out from behind that pile like an ocean of plague, pulsing like a heart. But there was nothing. Not a glimmer. Only the delicate strains of the warm morning sunlight twinkled from the shattered glass and metal littering the ground.

"I guess... there's only one way to find out," he murmured to the air, and started forwards. Ridley half-raised his arm as if to stop him, then let it drop and cautiously fell into step behind him.

Tom gathered speed, hopping over the rubble with a veteran's nimble silence. His apprehension warned him to slow down, but it was feeble, a mere ghost when set against the horror of a few moments before. The only fear he felt now was of that fear, of that indistinct madness igniting his mind again. It was a feeling he was intimate with - the same apprehension of the soldier, not the fear of combat, but the low dread that when combat came they didn't know how they'd handle it. The atavistic terror of earlier was nowhere to be found.

He reached the corner and paused. Hell, it was just a lump of crystal, right...?

Strange how it was still so hard to think that, even without the fear.

He peeked round.

_Well_, he thought,_ at least my brain's in perfect working order._

The crystal, the materia, was still there; but it's light, it's evil slobbering glow had extinguished, and it lay ungainfully on the warped concrete like a dead thing. The disgust rose sharply, bubbling up like bile in Tom's mind – even in... whatever state it was, it was still the most ugly son-of-a-bitch thing he'd ever clapped eyes on - but it had lost the foul aura of depravity it had once so forcefully emitted.

"Isn't that a thing," Ridley commented. "What's happened to it?"

"Not sure," Tom murmured. "I think it's... it's not dead, do you think?"

"You know, normally at a time like this," Ridley replied, still gazing at the thing warily, "I'd point out that it's just a rock, and how stupid this all sounds. But no, I don't think it's died. I thought it was already dead when we first saw it, in fact. Looks like it's just sort of… switched off."

Tom paused, considering. "You know those huge creatures they have over in Wutai?" He snapped his fingers irritably, trying to recall the name. "Adaman- something."

"Adamantaimai?"

"That's the one. They've got this huge shell on their back, and if they get threatened they sort of withdraw into it. I think this... thing, it's… withdrawn…" he trailed off. "You know, you're right. This sounds bloody idiotic. It's a _rock_."

"Yeah, well," Ridley replied as he retreated back round the corner, "Also at the top of my bloody stupid list is being scared shitless by a red light, but that didn't stop it happening, did it? Well, if that thing's sleeping, good for it. So long as it doesn't wake up again." He paused for a moment in silent contemplation. "You seen an Adamantaimai before, Tom?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"I'm just thinking, I'd _hate_ to see the mother that could make _that_ thing feel threatened."

Tom grinned, then they both laughed out loud. It felt like years to Tom since he'd last laughed at anything, and as he did he could feel some of the burdening weight from the past - was it only ten minutes? - slip and fall away. For a few moments at least it seemed like none of the day's events had ever happened. Not just in the hallucination sense, either.

The rising thuttering roar of the helicopters cut off further conversation as the aircraft entered the city limits. A minute later the first of the great black machines crested the last wave of rubble and swept overhead like a surfer leaping the tide, trailing a washing foam of dust and rocks in it's wake. The two soldiers staggered as the downdraft struck them, whipping and tearing at their hair and clothes and sending debris chunks flensing every which way; Tom shielded his eyes and watched as the pilot spotted them and whirled the helicopter round like a ballerina partner, a perfect one-eighty degree spin, and slewed to a halt in mid-air. Tom's eyebrow hitched up in grudging respect; he was good.

"Show-off, isn't he," Ridley shouted offhandedly above the din as the helicopter banked left, drifting away towards the flat ground beyond the rubble ravine, and swung around again to land. The two men jogged forwards as the craft touched down with professional grace, kicking up a small typhoon of dust around it before it's blades began to slow. A few moments later the main side door slid back and a man stepped out.

"Hm?" Tom frowned. He'd expected a scientist, or possibly another hired soldier. He hadn't expected a beaurocrat; in fact, he didn't think they existed anymore. Tailor-cut black suit, oiled black hair and sunglasses – the guy looked as if he'd just stepped out of a conspiracy movie, or possibly a government office, one with an excessively strict dress code and too-bright lighting. Polished black shoes clicked expensively as he stepped up to Tom and Ridley, who both had to mentally resist the years of military drill that commanded them to snap to attention and salute in the presence of a suit. "You the ones who fired the priority flare?" he barked without preamble, and when Tom and Ridley nodded, he continued, "Well, what you found had better be worth it, because we don't take kindly to being called out for no reason. So what is it?"

Tom blinked the brusqueness of his question, then silently pointed to his left, where the huge crystal lay several metres away.

To his credit, the beurocrat's expression barely even flickered as he caught sight of the thing – even having already seen it, and knowing what to expect, it's sheer ugliness still caused Tom to start involuntarily when he followed his gaze. A slight twitch of the eyebrows was the only sign that it had had any effect; the man seemed to have been designed from the shoes up for imperturbability. Tom wondered idly how he'd cope if it suddenly decided to activate again, then imagined it activating again, and wished he hadn't. "I see," he said after a few seconds. Ignoring the two men, he produced a mobile phone from inside his jacket, punched a button and placed it to his ear. "This is Simons," he spoke to whoever was on the other end, "It's been found, ma'am. I'm sending images now." From his other pocket he produced a small digital camera and quickly snapped some photos of the crystal before pressing several buttons on it's back, presumably to send them to whoever he was speaking to. Tom and Ridley glanced at each other, confusion apparent in their gazes as he slipped the camera back into his pocket and waited. After perhaps fifteen seconds, he nodded. "Yes, ma'am. It was found by soldiers…" he trailed off and glanced inquiringly at them; not questioningly, but expectantly: _Give me your names, soldiers._ Tom bit back his irritation.

"Jefferys and Ridley."

"Soldiers Jefferys and Ridley, ma'am." He fell silent for a few more seconds. "Yes ma'am. Yes ma'am, I will." He flipped the phone closed and, still ignoring the two soldiers, turned back to the helicopter and waved a hand, signaling to someone inside the gloomy interior.

And Tom and Ridley blinked in surprise as five figures in full chemical suits leapt out, followed by five more manhandling some sort of large silver-metal sphere with handles. Moving with practiced speed - and military precision, Tom couldn't fail to notice - the first group sprinted over to the materia and fanned out around it, while the others dropped the sphere onto the ground and twisted a handle on it's surface, causing it to split in half. The inside was hollow; it was some sort of carrying container, Tom realized.

His mood darkened as he watched, his thoughts returning to their earlier tangent, back in the train. Military helicopters, top-grade pilots, bio-containment squads - and, in this sans-beaurocracy world, a man in a suit… who were these guys?

"Your employer is very pleased with your results, soldiers," the black-suited man – Simons - finally addressed them; out of the corner of his eye Tom noticed that the men in protective suits were using whatever metal poles and other pieces of rubble they could find to push the materia crystal into the containment sphere. He didn't blame them; even with a suit on, the mere thought of touching that thing made him break out in hives. "She has told me that she will make sure you are well rewarded for this discovery. She has also informed me that no further test samples will be required due to this find, so your employment is hereby completed. We will contact you later today regarding your payment. Thank you." And without even pausing for breath, he turned his back on the two men and began to make his way back towards the helicopter.

It took several seconds for his words to actually sink in to the two men, and for a few moments they simply stood, staring at his rapidly retreating back. Then Ridley's brow creased, and Tom blinked in confusion. "Hey… what?" The stare Ridley threw to Tom was no less bewildered for its one eye than the one Tom gave back. "What was _that_ all about – hey!" he suddenly seemed to realize for the first time that the man known as Simons had almost reached the helicopter, and broke into a run. "Hey! Hey, wait a second!" he yelled against the roar of the accelerating helicopter blades; after a moment, Tom dashed after him, cursing as a storm of dust from the rotor downdraft assaulted his eyes. Through a haze of tears, he saw Ridley reach Simons as he was about to climb into the craft and catch him by the arm.

"Hey!" Ridley shouted, pulling Simons roughly round to glare angrily into the smoke of his sunglasses. "You can't just fly off and leave us here with nothing but the promise of a payment. What's our guarantee you're going to make good on this -?"

His voice trailed off as Simon's gaze slowly turned down to rest on the gloved hand clamping him roughly below the shoulder, and just for a moment, there was something, something nameless and dangerous that flickered across his face like a winter breeze. Something that made Tom suddenly realize that the helicopter's interior was very, very dark; enough so that he couldn't see anyone who might be in there, waiting for an order. Ridley blinked and let go.

"Thank you," Simons murmured coolly. Smoothing out the crumpled cloth with an almost fastidious air, he continued, "I understand your concern, gentlemen. This specimen, however, is of the highest priority to date that anyone has found, and thus," he sent a pointed glance at the two men, "We would appreciate not having our time wasted. If you return to our headquarters in Kalm further arrangements can and will be made." He turned his back and clambered into the helicopter. "That is all I can offer," he finished dismissively over his shoulder. "Good day."

"Hey, wait -" Tom started forwards, but before he could complete his complaint the helicopter door roared across and slammed shut, causing him to leap back with a startled curse as it narrowly missed his fingers. A second later the whirling rotor blades thundered into full-throttled life, blasting both men with a wall of dust, wind and noise; blinded and deafened, they staggered back from the onslaught as the machine lumbered into the air.

By the time they could see again, the helicopter was already out of sight over the mountains of rubble. Only the fading rumble of it's engines was any testament to it's being there.

"Damn you!" Ridley bellowed, shaking his fist at the empty air; he scooped up a rock and flung it in the direction the copter had gone, practically hopping from one foot to the other in his fury. "You get the hell back here!"

Tom simply shook his head ruefully. "Oh, come on," he muttered, brushing clouds of dust from his clothes. "Do you really think they're going to hear you?"

"What?" Ridley snarled. "They're gonna rip us off, I just know it. What're we going to do?"

"What _can_ we do?" Tom replied. He sighed into the near-silence. "Not a lot, except hope they're not lying."

"I doubt that suited guy has any qualms about that," Ridley growled. "And who the hell were they, anyway? This is all getting too damn weird. Too damn fucking weird."

Tom barked sudden laughter. "Hah! _Getting _weird? It got too damn fucking weird ten minutes ago, Ridley. That stone…" He glanced up. Overhead, the sky was awash with gold, the soft layered clouds glowing with a gentle nimbus in the sunlight, and a gentle breeze played around his face, carrying with it the faded scents of pollen and perfume, and the distant cries of an eagle hunting n the wastelands; reminders of life, of an outside world the events of the past half an hour had all but wiped from his mind. He smiled, and turned to Ridley. "And you know what else?" he continued. "I don't care. They're welcome to the damn thing. I wouldn't bloody care if they charged us instead of paying us. That rock, it's out of here, and we don't have to traipse all over this continent looking for damn filthy pieces of stone any more." He turned and started back towards the train from which they'd come. "I can go back home to Carla and Jenny. I can have a beer. I can start work on my farm, with or without their seed. That's bloody payment enough for me. You coming?"

Ridley snorted and turned to follow him. "True enough. I'll take a beer as well. God knows I need it." He caught up to Tom. "Besides," he continued, "It's like you said earlier. They've hired fifty of Shinra's crack troops. You don't rip that crowd off in a hurry." He pulled out the flare gun. "Should I call in a lift?"

"No, don't bother," Tom replied, waving his hand dismissively. "We left our chocobos at the city limits, remember? We can't leave them behind. Besides, I'm in the mood to go riding. I need some excitement after all that."

Ridley turned to stare at him. "Excitement? Oh, everything that's just happened was practically watching paint dry, wasn't it?"

Tom laughed. "No, you idiot. That was… bad excitement. I'm talking about good, fun excitement, like, say, sprinting across these wastelands at sixty miles an hour."

"And smashing your head into these wastelands at sixty miles an hour," Ridley shot back, grinning, "If your chocobo decides to buck you off like it has done every mile from Kalm to here – "

They paused.

A trickle of stones showered down a nearby rubble pile.

Slowly, the two men looked down at the ground.

They turned to each other.

"Say," Ridley breathed, "Did you just feel that - ?"

It happened again. The ground shifted beneath their feet.

A quiet rumbling reached their ears.

"What?" Tom's gaze flicked around urgently, seeking the source of the noise. "What's happening?" It sounded as if a massive military convoy was rapidly approaching, tanks and humvees chewing up the ground beneath track and tyre, and for a moment he wondered if Simons had decided to call in some kind of troop detachment for some reason; but that was impossible, not even the hardiest all-terrainer could make it across this rubble, never mind an entire convoy –

The ground jerked suddenly, violently, throwing the two men off-balance as if some sort of massive ordnance piece had erupted nearby, but there was no explosion, no whine of shell or rocket, no vapour trail or tracer in the sky that was the only thing either man had experienced that could shake the earth like that; only the rumbling, an ominous earthen growl growing steadily louder, louder still, the rumble of a convoy now passing right by them but that refused to appear; a hail of stones poured from the mountains of debris around them, pelting and flensing exposed flesh with saw-edged stone, and a moment later a rending metal groan reverberated in the air and the peak of a nearby mound collapsed in on itself, sucking down like the sand of an egg-timer.

"What the hell is going on?" Tom roared, his voice a bare whisper above the rending din.

Then the city began to tremble. And a spark of fear ignited in their eyes as they realized.

"Earthquake!" Ridley seized Tom by the shoulders, struggling to keep his balance as the trembling worsened. His eye was wild, his voice all but inaudible above the wall of sound. "Tom, it's an earthquake! We've got to get to higher ground, we're gonna get crushed - !"

They turned to run, staggering as the tremors became concussions, the ground beneath their feet leaping and shaking as if under aerial bombardment. "Up there!" Ridley pointed and sprinted towards the base of the rubble; "Come on, Tom, we've got to climb – "

He looked up, and saw the avalanche as it crashed down.

"Ridley, watch out!"

Tom seized his arm, dragging him backwards as several tonnes of concrete smashed down where he had stood moments before.

"We can't climb, you idiot!" Tom roared, spinning a white-faced Ridley to face him. "We've got to find some other way, this whole place is gonna collapse – "

That was the last he ever saw of him.

The world crashed and spun like a derailed train carriage, the ground heaving and hurling Tom from his feet, slamming him into the jagged concrete; his yell of pain was lost in the thunderous wail of tortured earth, the screams of a great thrashing beast maddened by agony as it picked him up and smashed him into the ground, again, again and again, his body tumbling like a rag doll as he fought to fight, fought to stand, fought not to scream. The landscape blurred as the tremors reached a pitch of ecstasy and with a series of screeching ululations the mountains of rubble began to collapse, shaken beyond even their endurance; girders, boulders, coiling snakes of whipping cable lashed down around him, smashing the ground into powder scant inches from his limbs, and as the still-rising bellowing of the earth reached a volume beyond endurance he clapped his hands over his ears and curled up and screamed, screamed against the impossible noise, screamed in despair –

- As the earthquake reached a shrieking climax, and the city exploded.

There was no sound. It was beyond sound, so loud it could not be comprehended. A heavy pressure, like a hand molded to every contour of his body, wrapped around Tom and squeezed until his eyes bugged and his lungs were about to implode. For a second, time slowed, stood still.

And then –

The sky became light. A searing shockwave of sheer blinding energy blazed out across the city, unstoppable in it's utter fury. Twenty feet above him, in listless astonishment Tom looked up and watched as the entire upper half of the rubble mounds were simply obliterated – not knocked aside, not collapsed, but wiped from existence as if made from smoke as the shockwave shrieked over the shallow canyon, forming a blinding roof of screaming light and wind that etched harsh shadows across the ground. A moment later it passed over, revealing the sky again.

And revealing what was rising to engulf it. What twisted, arced, spiraled upwards towards the heavens to blot out the sunlight with the eerie light of it's own.

What peaked, miles in the sky.

And fell.

Tom screamed.

It was the last sound he ever made.

In the coming weeks and months, the thing that had once been Tom Jefferys stalked the rocky wastelands in a constant hunt for prey; when it was hungry, for food; when it was not, for the hot spray of blood, for the snapping of bones as it tore them apart with tooth and claw. It could remember nothing of how it came to be; nothing that could suggest to it there even _was_ something before, except once, a brief stirring of memory and a vague sense of unease as it tore the head from a creature like itself, one with a missing eye.

That, and two sounds. Two sounds, which it could vaguely recall as having been part of many more, but that didn't matter. None of the others concerned it. Only these two special sounds, which it repeated, day after day after day:

"… Hunt… kill… hunt… kill…"


End file.
